Mark Reinfeld – Vegan Fusion
He currently offers online vegan cooking lessons at CookingHealthyLessons.com as well as vegan cooking and raw food preparation consulting, cookbooks, recipe development, cooking classes, workshops, chef training, intensives and retreats in both North America and Europe.
OM Times Magazine had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Reinfeld and finding out just what following a vegan lifestyle means.
Q: Mark, can you please give us a good working definition for “vegan”?
Vegan is a diet and lifestyle that is plant-based. As far as the diet, you enjoy all of the amazing fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices that the earth has to offer. A vegan also would be free from animal products in all other aspects of their life. This extends to choices of clothing, health and beauty products, and beyond.
Q: What are some of the benefits of the vegan lifestyle?
There are numerous benefits. Firstly, the cuisine tastes amazing! There are also major benefits to our health. We now know that many diseases such as heart disease, certain forms of diabetes and cancers, and other conditions like obesity can be prevented and reversed by including more vegan foods in our diet.
Another major benefit has to do with preserving environment. Eating vegan foods is perhaps the single most important step to take as an environmental activist. Its staggering when you compare the amount of land usage, water usage, and energy usage of a meat centered diet to a plant centered one. Feeding ourselves with plants uses a fraction of the earths limited resources. For instance it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat. I encourage anyone who is even remotely concerned about the environment to take a look at some of the statistics available. The livestock industry is one of the world’s largest polluters and contributor to green house gas emissions. Going plant-based also helps us preserve rainforests from being clear-cut for cattle grazing. These forests are abundant with medicinal plants and are vital to our survival on the planet.
I was interested in the Ravioli recipe but there is no mention of how to make the sun-dried tomato sauce. Did I miss something? Thx for this recipe – it looks good enough to take to my raw food potluck!